As a new user I would like to see a "new users and beginners" folder. It seems to be the norm on a lot of program sites. The general idea is that new users can ask any fool question they want, and not feel like total idiots.

So, here goes with my idiot questions. I've noticed that there are a few sims which aren't looking at orbits from directly above, how's this done?

Two, can you stick in a divide or multiply sign into any of the data boxes? So if I had a Pluto mass let's say, I could stick in divided by ( / ) 0.666 to give me a rough Sedna mass.

Three, how are animations done? Do you need something like Snagit to create one?

The traffic on this forum is relatively light, so I haven't made lots of sub-forums. You can ask your beginner questions here. To change the viewing orientation, use the scroll bar on the right of the screen. You can't do math in the data boxes. I may add this capability in the future, using the eval function. Everyone who does animations probably has their own method. In Gravity Simulator's File menu is an option called "Screen Shots". This will create a series of .bmp images in the same folder as your simulation. Then use external software such as Photoshop, or GIF Construction Set Professional to turn your screen shots into an animated GIF. You might want to delete the original screen shots afterwards since they are .bmp files which take up a lot of harddrive space.

I mentioned the app to someone who's made a planet generator plugin for a 3d app called Cinema4d. I'll let him know about the beta version. Here's an image of Mars from his plugin. I'm hoping that we can import data to do nicer animations of planets.

I think I read somewhere once, that if we terraformed Mars, it would take about two hundred years before anyone could venture out in just a mask and fur suit. Of course there's the ethics of the matter to consider, what if primitive life forms are found on Mars?

Then there's a limited panspermia. I've no problem with the idea that life formed on Mars, and because Mars cooled down faster than the Earth, life could have developed there first. There could have been a period when the Earth was ejecting life forms into orbit (via storm sprites?) and Mars was doing the same in the other direction. That would mean that we were sending Mars lighter stuff, and they were sending heavier stuff. Our solar system might be all full of migrants, with only somewhere like Titan having the possibility of extra solar system panspermia visitors.

I once did an animation of Mars where its axis shifted about forty five degrees. It was hit by something very big. The planet doesn't shift round, but the mantle does. There would have been a distinct "S" shaped shimmy as it did this, and the plate tectonics would have gone haywire.

That raises a boat load of question. Did this happen when Mars has an ocean? Or was it then all ice? How does Mars handle ice loading, when the ice starts to sublate off rather than melt?

Another idiot question. I was looking at the Sedna sim, and wondered if it were possible to run two sims at once? One where the solar system simply didn't "see" this brown dwarf, the other where it did.

What I fancy doing, is taking a look at a guy called Joe Keller's theory about a sub brown dwarf, which he claims to have photographs of.

I'll find out the details and plug the thing in. I know that it's supposed to be in Crater and at about 200 a.u. with a period of about 3000 years. Now at a rough guess that will put the solar system's barycentre somewhere near Mars. Will that wobble show up from pulsar doppler shifts I wonder?

What I fancy doing, is taking a look at a guy called Joe Keller's theory about a sub brown dwarf, which he claims to have photographs of.

Don't bother - It's nonsense, like all of these claims. The author's a nut who thinks that the cosmic microwave background is caused by the sun, and that the CMB anisotropy is caused by the gravitatinal field of kuiper belt objects.

I'm not bothered about it. It would just be a little project to help me learn the ins and outs of the program. I might look up all the proposed planet x candidates, as I seem to remember one was at about 80 degrees to the ecliptic. Best of all would be a rogue planet that smashed into everything